Adrastia Melantha
Adrastia Melantha is a Judicatrix in the service of the Imperium of Sidhae. Known by the nickname of Dark Flower, she is famous for her outstanding beauty even by the high Sidh standards and for her uncanny prowess as an assassin in equal measures. Background Adrastia is, somewhat unusually for a Judicator, a first-generation convert, born as an ordinary human on the Federation of Mankind world of New Kaunas. Her Sidh name of Adrastia is a handle given to her by her late mentor, Judicator Mikaelus, her birth name being consigned to oblivion by herself. Born on New Kaunas in a working-class family in 2585, the immediate aftermath of the bloody Reconquest Wars, Adrastia spent her childhood in poverty, hardship and squalor. While New Kaunas was spared the direct ravages of the Reconquest Wars, life was hardly better because of it. An industrial world of some importance, New Kaunas had been mercilessly exploited for decades by the megacorporations running their mines and industrial complexes that supplied the Federation war effort. With virtually all production being diverted to supplying the military, barely anything remained for the local population, leading to abysmal living standards for most New Kaunians. To further aggravate things, the corporations had pressured the planetary government into abolishing minimum wage, effectively reducing much of the population to a modern-day serfdom, preventing the labour force from leaving the world simply by keeping them too poor to afford a way off-world. This understandably led to growing civil unrest and numerous anti-corporation insurgencies. While the Reconquest Wars were still raging, the population could be kept more or less pacified with the imminent Sidh threat, but with the cessation of overt hostilities, New Kaunians would begin to demand improvement of their living standards and labour rights. While the corporations did concede on some trivial points, most issues of importance were ignored, and any uprisings brutally suppressed. With tensions rising, New Kaunas fell into chaos in 2590 when the various anti-corporate groups formed a united People's Union of New Kaunas and started a planetwide anti-corporate insurgency with the goal of driving the megacorps off their homeworld. Violent skirmishes, terrorist attacks on corporate facilities, assassinations of corporate officials and the consequent brutal crackdowns effectively turned the planet into a low-intensity warzone. Finding their security forces insufficient to quell the popular revolt, the megacorps would employ off-world mercenaries to protect their assets. While nominally hired for security duties, these mercs more often than not served as corporate death squads, killing known rebel sympathizers, terrorizing the population and committing various atrocities. When that failed to pacify the rebellion, the corporations called upon the Federation military. Even so, it took 10 bloody years to crush the revolt. While the Federation Senate did eventually make a formal inquiry and levied heavy fines on the involved corporations for breaches of federal labour laws and human rights abuses, the damage was done, millions of New Kaunians dead and the planet's status as the industrial powerhouse of it's sector destroyed. It was amidst this chaos, violence and despair that Adrastia spent much of her early years. Several of her family members and friends fell victim to violence between corporate security and PUNK insurgents, or to the brutal reprisals carried out by mercs on megacorp payroll. Her parents were killed by a Federation military napalm strike that targeted a group of insurgents holed up in her residential district, also seriously injuring Adrastia's younger sister. Orphaned in her early teens, with an injured young sister to care for in an uncaring and violent world, Adrastia was consequently forced to resort to theft, begging and prostitution to survive. With food becoming ever scarcer as the insurgency war dragged on, both girls were on the brink of starvation, although Adrastia would always save the better part of what little she could come by for her sister. One day, all she had managed to secure was a pair of half-rotten potatoes. When her sister complained about the potatoes being rotten, Adrastia would explode in a hunger-induced fit of rage, violently driving her little sisterl off. She would never see her sister again, the girl probably having wandered off and eventually perished of starvation alone somewhere in the war-torn slums. This incident would become Adrastia's deepest lifelong regret, her eventual conversion and taking up the Sidh Way being in part driven by her quest for atonement. Shortly afterwards, she suffered another setback, being enslaved by a local pimp after making the mistake of seeking his protection after being robbed and beaten by a client. Having no family or dignity left to lose and overwhelmed with profound and bitter hatred and disgust for Humanity in general, Adrastia resolved to commit suicide. It was when she was about to take her life that a Sidh Judicator by the name of Mikaelus managed to convince her to reconsider and offered to take her into his care. Since the girl refused to give her real name, stating that she no longer wanted it, Mikaelus would give her a new one - Adrastia Melantha. Young Adrastia spent the following years in Mikaelus's care, being educated and trained in the Sidh ways and successfuly converting upon coming of age. Seeing potential in her, Mikaelus granted the girl a place in his cell, the two spending the next 30 years inseparably together in service of the Imperium. Adrastia would remain by his side even after earning her "full eagle", somewhat atypically for Judicators. She was rescued by the Polunochnaya crew as the sole survivor of a botched attempt to intercept the renegade Judicator Alain that left Judicator Mikaelus and the rest of his cell and retinue dead. Personality Adrastia's difficult childhood and teenage years have been the major defining influence on her perceptions and attitudes. The other such influence is Judicator Mikaelus, her foster-father, tutor and long-time companion, to whom she fondly refers as her "Dark Angel". His death has left Adrastia deeply depressed and melancholic. Having personally experienced oppression and mistreatment in her early youth, Adrastia has a strong sense of justice. Inflicting arbitrary cruelty or injustice upon anyone is the quickest way to upset her. She originally held deep contempt and disgust for everything having to do with Humanity, arguing that all the worst things in her life happened because of other humans, her best memories being brought by a Sidh. While these sentiments have waned overtime, Adrastia is still somewhat bitter and nihilistic about Humanity and human capacity for good. That being said, she makes a point of being better than the humans she resents, always striving to be kind and considerate, helping the needy and the unjustly-oppressed regardless of species and righting wrongs and injustices. This oftentimes puts her in the difficult position of having to deal with her own kind unjustly oppressing innocent humans. While some would accuse Adrastia of hypocrisy because of this, she dismisses such accusations by stating that "I am not other Sidhae - I am myself". While averse to arbitrary cruelty, Adrastia is by no means averse to cruelty per se, and will more than willingly unleash her wrath upon those who have earned it with their unrighteous actions. Criminals, traitors, heretics and other assorted scum, all who would exploit the weak and defenseless for personal gain can expect no mercy from her, and if anything, Adrastia can be more ruthless than most Judicators in dealing with such enemies of the Emperor. That being said, she does not take any degree of pride in her work, regarding the Order of Judicators as a necessary evil in a galaxy full of much worse evils. In order to deal with her own convictions contradicting her orders, which oftentimes require her to carry out downright cruel and unjust acts, Adrastia has come to view herself as merely a tool in the hands of the Imperial government. She compares herself to a hammer, equally useful in building a house and crushing a skull, it being up to the hand that wields it to decide which use it shall be put to. Adrastia is deeply religious, as far as that can be applied to a Sidh, letting the Word guide her in every aspect of life. While unusually open-minded for her kind, she, like most of her people, is firmly convinced about the veracity and supremacy of the Word over other scriptures. She is somewhat fatalistic, believing there is no point to worry about anything, things always turning out the way they were meant to turn out in any event. This lends to her tranquil demeanor even in situations of extreme danger. Adrastia is rather gifted in arts, having a profound interest in song and poetry. She is proficient with multiple musical instruments and frequently recites poetry of Old Terran classics, often in reference to the situation at hand. Trivia Judicatrix Adrastia is yet to make a proper appearance in any Frencoverse Tale or RP. Her full name Adrastia Melantha translates as "courageous dark flower" in Ancient Greek.